ZEMYNA (pronounced zuh-MEE-nah) is the Lithuanian Goddess of the earth, also known as ZEMES MATE in Latvia. She is the archetypical Mother Nature, and brings life to all things. Honored at every birth and every festival, offerings of bread, beer, and herbs were laid on the ground, tied to trees, or thrown into moving water to thank her. Zemyna is the daughter of Saule, Goddess of the Sun, and her husband Meness or Menulis, God of the Moon. Her name means "earth" or "mother of the soil," and she is also associated with the underworld, in so far as the dead were returned to her arms in the earth. Baltic poems gave her the epithets "BLOOMER" and "SHE WHO RAISES FLOWERS."